In their desire to cleanse Tennessee of statues of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, Tennessee politicians and Tennessee cities are perhaps unknowingly missing a target of opportunity to turn the tables on racists.
The City of Memphis sold two city parks to get around a preservation law to remove statues of Forrest and Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis. Gov. Bill Haslam wants a bust of Forrest removed from the State Capitol building. A privately-owned Forrest statue next to I-65 in Nashville was recently vandalized, and is, of course, a source of argument.
Forrest was a lieutenant general, feared and hated, respected and condemned. His brilliance as a cavalry commander is undeniable – a fact his enemies fully recognized. Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman said of Forrest, “That devil Forrest…must be hunted down and killed if it costs ten thousand lives and bankrupts the federal treasury.”
After the war, Sherman offered a further reflection on his Confederate adversary: “After all, I think Forrest was the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on either side.”

Forrest is controversial for his Civil War Confederate allegiance; for a massacre of black Union troops at Ft. Pillow, Tenn. (about which there is dispute as to Forrest’s role); his pre-war business as a slave trader, and his connection to the Ku Klux Klan.
Most problematic in terms of today’s public perception is his Klan association, mentioned in every news story dealing with one of his statues.
The first Ku Klux Klan was formed on Dec. 24, 1865, in Pulaski, Tenn. by six former Confederate soldiers. They subsequently approached Forrest to be its first grand wizard. Debate exists as to why Forrest accepted. Some historians say it was because he wanted to continue to subjugate blacks and use the Klan to effectively keep fighting the war. Others say it was to oppose predatory Reconstruction practices being visited on the South. Or something else. Opinions vary.
Hooper: Removal of Nathan Bedford Forrest statue was monumental art heist
According to John Tures, a political science professor at LaGrange College, Georgia, Forrest’s attitudes on the Klan and race aren’t as cut-and-dried as Forrest detractors contend.

In a July 6, 2015 blog article published on the Huffington Post titled, “Nathan Bedford Forrest vs. the Ku Klux Klan,” Tures wrote, “But even this Forrest critic can admit that the Klan founder did one great thing for this country. He disbanded the KKK, and even worked to fight those who wanted to keep it going.
Tures continued, “…for those who seek to kill blacks while waving a Confederate flag, or those who burn African American churches across the South, including my state of Georgia, keep this in mind: General Nathan Bedford Forrest, and the Confederate War heroes you worship, wouldn’t have approved. In fact, they might have fought you for your illegal actions.”
What? Not the Nathan Bedford Forrest. Not that Forrest.
About Forrest and the Klan, PBS writer Ben Phelan wrote, “After only a year as Grand Wizard, in January 1869, faced with an ungovernable membership employing methods that seemed increasingly counterproductive, Forrest issued KKK General Order Number One: “It is therefore ordered and decreed, that the masks and costumes of this Order be entirely abolished and destroyed.” By the end of his life, Forrest’s racial attitudes would evolve — in 1875, he advocated for the admission of blacks into law school — and he lived to fully renounce his involvement with the all-but-vanished Klan

The History Channel website says, “Former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was the KKK’s first grand wizard; in 1869, he unsuccessfully tried to disband it after he grew critical of the Klan’s excessive violence.”
The Klan for decades was, as Phelan said, all but vanished. But it emerged again in the 1920s with its masks, flaming torches, and terrorism directed mainly at blacks but also Jews, Catholics and others.
And if the Klan as we know it today is a problem, and a reason to dismantle statues, why are there memorials for the late U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-WV?
Byrd, far closer to us in time, was for a period of his life devoted to the domination of blacks. At age 27, In a 1944 letter to a senator, Byrd, a Klan Exalted Cyclops, wrote, “I shall never fight in the armed forces with a negro by my side…Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.”
As a U.S. senator he filibustered and voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and voted against the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
There are more than 50 education buildings; bridges; community centers; roads; industrial parks; government buildings, and other places named for Byrd. The “take them down” controversy doesn’t surround Byrd because he changed and repented of his views. He said his Klan association was the “worst mistake of my life.” When he died, President Barack Obama said, “America has lost a voice of principle and reason.”
And that speaks to the opportunity concerning Forrest. There’s a record that Forrest changed his views. That’s something of which to take advantage.
It is completely understandable that a black American can look at a Forrest statue and say, “If his side had prevailed, slavery would have continued. Why are we memorializing that?”
On the other hand, as black American and former professional basketball player Charles Barkley has famously said, “I’m 54 years old. I’ve never thought about those statues a day in my life. I think if you asked most black people to be honest, they ain’t thought a day in their life about those stupid statues.”
Here’s a chance to take a Confederate battle flag out of the racists’ hands. Ripping down statues and removing busts is motion, not action. Focus instead should be on Forrest’s change of heart, his General Order No. 1, and the personal respect about which he spoke later in his short (56 years) life. One such example is demonstrated in his 1875 speech to the Order of the Pole-Bearers, an association of black southerners. “We were born on the same soil, breathe the same air, and live in the same land. Why, then, can we not live as brothers?” Forrest said in his speech. “I will say that when the war broke out I felt it my duty to stand by my people. When the time came I did the best I could, and I don’t believe I flickered. I came here with the jeers of some white people, who think that I am doing wrong. I believe that I can exert some influence, and do much to assist the people in strengthening fraternal relations, and shall do all in my power to bring about peace…We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment.”
The present approach makes Forrest a martyr to racists. It also unnerves people who dislike images of statues being torn down, or any form of a similar practice called by the ancient Romans damnatio memoriae (damnation of memory).
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But neither outcome is necessary. Forrest’s words of reconciliation, and his opposition to the Klan, can be shoved back into the racists’ faces. It takes away the value to them of Forrest as a symbol.
That’s not to say Forrest should be transformed into some sort of civil rights hero. That’s going too far. But if Robert Byrd’s 20th century Klan affiliation and racist words can be forgiven and hailed by America’s first black president as a an example of evolving attitudes, why not take the same approach with Forrest and talk about the evidence of his transition?
That also might be a better message to the next generation than simply tearing down statues.

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George Korda is political analyst for WATE-TV, appearing Sundays on “Tennessee This Week.” He hosts “State Your Case” from noon – 2 p.m. Sundays on WOKI-FM Newstalk 98.7. Korda is a frequent speaker and writer on political and news media subjects. He is president of Korda Communications, a public relations and communications consulting firm